


gravity in a starless city

by xerampelinae



Series: the hope suite [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Gen, Marriage of Convenience, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:34:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: “I do not think I can protect you from this,” Saw says with a creaking, sorrowful voice.Jyn thinksLet them trythrough the tears welling in her eyes but does not voice it. The ozone of blasterfire clings to her as persistently as expensive perfume and she knows what resources they have are not enough. However persistent and violent their resistance, the Partisans are only a fraction of a percent of the size of the Empire. They are already skeptical of an unconfirmed collaborators daughter. Saw reaches the boundary of his capacity--close, but not quite yet.For the first time since the Partisans broke from the Rebellion, Saw reaches out. The Rebellion reaches reluctantly back.





	gravity in a starless city

When he comes for them on Lah’mu, Krennic seeks hostages to force Galen Erso’s hand. Lyra falls and hostages becomes a singular target. Jyn. Krennic’s thoughts turn a different way.

“She would be a good bride,” he says thoughtfully, “if small. Your daughter. Best to start early with these things.”

Galen pales as he thinks of his daughter, only just eight. She still sits in his lap to have her hair braided each night and morning. Her face still has a child’s softness. Her majority is still a decade away.

“She went away,” Galen says unsteadily. “For schooling. Our families insisted.”

“Oh?” Krennic says. “Education is important. Nothing but the finest for such a dear child.”

-

When Krennic’s Death Troopers are unable to locate Jyn he reluctantly accepts that perhaps, Galen is not lying, however much he seems to be.

Saw Gerrera arrives sometime in the dark hours after Krennic’s ship departs, an indeterminate cycle of hunger and fear fading into one another before the hatch opens and a face unguarded by a Storm Trooper’s helmet appears.

“My child,” Saw says, claiming her as his, and draws her forth from the cave and into a darkness parted by the lanterns of his crew.

They don’t pass her mother’s body in parting, but Jyn knows she lies still where she fell. She doesn’t ask Saw where her mother is buried and Saw doesn’t lie to tell her that she was.

-

Years pass; first plans and prototypes materialize, then construction begins to progress. Krennic’s eyes never quite lose their fixation on the distant, immaterial image of Jyn Erso growing up outside of Imperial care--he never quite extracts the name of Jyn’s school or planet yet begins to forget its truthlessness--while Galen never forgets Krennic’s first suggestion of Jyn Erso as child bride. 

This fear guides Galen’s hand earlier than it otherwise would, carried by a young, doubting pilot, even as he continues to stall the Death Star’s progress with all the wholehearted obstructiveness he can produce out of Imperial bureaucracy: near a decade’s worth, and more if fear were less at his throat.

This way, at least, news of the planet-killer comes before its completion.

-

Jyn finds Galen’s messenger after Bor Gullet withdraws, herself freshly returned from a strike on an Imperial installation. He is younger than she’s seen taken by Bor Gullet: maybe a handful of years older than her, maybe not even twenty. Youth is not protection here.

“Are you all right?” Jyn says, not really expecting an answer. She removes the restraints and sets her shoulders to lift him; many of the Partisans are reluctant to interact much with humanoids, what with their dominance of Imperial ranks. Those with Imperial affiliation receive even less warm a welcome. “What would Saw see in a what--cargo pilot--to employ  
this?”

“The pilot,” he murmurs. “I am the pilot.”

“Yeah?” Jyn says, lifting him, arm over her shoulder. “What’s the pilot’s name?”

“Bodhi,” he says after too long a pause.

“Yeah?” Jyn says again, gently. “What brings you here, Bodhi?”

“Urgent message,” Bodhi says, lost-sounding. “Galen Erso sent me.”

Jyn stops, then begins taking measured steps forward and carrying Bodhi with her. “Yeah?” she says encouragingly. “What’d he say?”

-

Jyn’s life splits cleanly into two near-even halves: Jyn Erso, born in a prison, learning her steps in the glitz of Coruscant, and farming on Lah’mu, then Kestrel Dawn, adopted by Saw Gerrera and tutored through the ranks of the Partisans. This is the first fracture in what will be the division of them.

“What did his message say?” Jyn says softly once she’s alone with Saw. Bodhi is settled within a cell on a pallet, painstakingly fed what thin soup he could stomach and left to rest and recover as possible.

“My girl,” Saw says. “Come walk with me.”

-

“I do not think I can protect you from this,” Saw says with a creaking, sorrowful voice. 

Jyn thinks _Let them try_ through the tears welling in her eyes but does not voice it. The ozone of blasterfire clings to her as persistently as expensive perfume and she knows what resources they have are not enough. However persistent and violent their resistance, the Partisans are only a fraction of a percent of the size of the Empire. They are already skeptical of an unconfirmed collaborators daughter. Saw reaches the boundary of his capacity--close, but not quite yet.

For the first time since the Partisans broke from the Rebellion, Saw reaches out. The Rebellion reaches reluctantly back.

-

Jyn brings only what she can carry, and Bodhi. The Partisans have scrapped and cannibalized the shuttle Bodhi had defected in. It is unrecognizable as the Imperial vehicle it once was; Bodhi’s mind remains scrambled but he responds to Jyn’s words more and the controls move smoothly under his hands. The shuttle itself carries a shipment of weaponry and ammunition. It is less a gesture of good faith and well wishes and more a confused attempt at a dowry. It is an apt metaphor for Jyn’s second father.

-

A lieutenant greets them on an Outer Rim moon and performs a sweep of the shuttle before escorting Jyn and Bodhi out. A larger team takes their place as the lieutenant guides them into the outpost. They huddle together as the lieutenant walks off with Bodhi’s message to a comm station and waits to hear back from Command.

When he returns, the lieutenant is more at ease but no less stiff. “Please come in, Miss Erso.”

-

The council speaks a single woman with patient but strong voice. “The Alliance is willing to meet your father’s conditions, Miss Erso.”

“Yeah?” Jyn says, “Which ones?”

“Galen Erso and Saw Gerrera make quite clear their concern for your safety in the face of Krennic’s intent. The Alliance would be happy to arrange a partnership that would preclude any the Empire might arrange.”

“For what?” Jyn presses.

“Pardon?” Mothma says.

“What does the Alliance require for that?” Jyn says.

“Further cooperation in the recovery of your father’s plans,” Mothma says smoothly, “which does not preclude renewal of Saw Gerrera’s own partnership with the Alliance.”

“I have a pilot,” Jyn says then. “He carried that message this far. I won’t leave him behind to the Empire now.”

“Very well,” Mothma says. “Any other conditions?”

Jyn shakes with the restraint of hysterical laughter but offers nothing more. The lieutenant takes over the station once more as Mothma furnishes additional instructions.

-

“Hey,” the lieutenant says after. Jyn nods her head at him and a peal of jagged laughter escapes her. “Are you all right?”

“Where is the Alliance going to produced a ‘partnership’ from that will be able to tolerate the Partisan daughter of an Imperial collaborator?” Jyn says, chest tight as the laughter ricochets within it.

“I’ll take care of it,” the lieutenant promises. It suddenly strikes her that he’s as young as Bodhi.

“What’s your name?” Jyn asks.

The lieutenant laughs, face lighting up. “Cassian Andor.”

“Kestrel Dawn,” she says, “--Well, Jyn Erso.”

They laugh together at that.

-

Cassian is not lying when he says he will take care of it. Just as Jyn Erso had disappeared into Kestrel Dawn and a handful of other identities, so too does Kestrel Dawn disappear into Jyn Andor, witnessed only by a discreet Rebel officiant and Bodhi, excited and slightly dazed.

“Galen will be so relieved,” he says in the shuttle after. It is a cargo shuttle and there is only a single set of cramped bunkbeds for the three of them to share. On the way to the Outer Rim, Jyn had claimed the top bunk. On their way from it, Jyn shares with Cassian. It’s better for Bodhi to have the slightly enclosed space, closer to the floor in case he falls out of bed again; each sleep cycle she makes sure to slide the bunk’s screen shut and fasten it carefully, as her mother had done on the bunk their family their family had shared on the cargo flight to Lah’mu. It makes him feel safer, to be enclosed but not cramped within its space. It is worth the strangeness of sharing the bunk with Cassian; soldiers, at least, learn to sleep when and where they can.

It is a strange, bitter thing to learn that both the Alliance and the Partisans make soldiers of children. This is what fighting the Empire requires.

-

“I would understand if you were to take a lover,” Cassian says in the hushed dark that they use to simulate planetary nightfall. “Or if you were to plan on a dissolution once you are old enough to refuse any guardian’s choice.”

Jyn is silent for a moment. “Few of the Partisans marry,” she says finally. “Everything up to that point, yes, but no further. But my parents--”

“--Faithful to the death,” Cassian says softly, understanding, “and perhaps beyond.”

A low breath shudders out of Jyn, rattling in her chest. Cassian seeks her hand in the dark and tentatively cradles it.

“I understand,” he says. “My parents as well.”

“Do you remember them well, your family?” Jyn says eventually.

“Only small things,” Cassian says. “The things a child clings to, can understand.”

“Sometimes that’s all we have,” Jyn says. 

-

The Rebel Alliance greets Jyn with a universally suspicious regard divided into unequal halves: those with the clearance to know her identity and those that know only that mission-focused Lieutenant Andor has suddenly taken a young wife.

This last one reaches Jyn as she sits eating with Bodhi, perhaps only because Cassian is away at some confidential briefing.

“What do they think of you?” Jyn asks.

“That I am your pet or your servant,” Bodhi says lightly.

“And not my,” Jyn pauses to think, “lover?”

“No,” Bodhi says with easy cheer. “Your captain is too attached to people and things. If I were only yours, well, perhaps I would be dead. And I am clearly not both of yours’.”

Jyn chokes on a swallow of food that is in fact simple air.

“Ergo,” Bodhi says, grin fading at the edges, “servant. Pet. Pity case.”

Jyn reaches out for Bodhi and stops, hand hovering near his. “My theory is friend.”

“It is a good theory,” Bodhi says and squeezes her hand. 

-

“It is a good thing they count me as her friend,” Bodhi says later to Cassian, “because it keeps me from being a competitor or obstruction in the midst of your whirlwind romance.”

Cassian freezes, a mouthful of soup unswallowed. “What,” he croaks finally, “did you say of this--romance?”

“Oh,” Bodhi says nonchalantly, “it is a love for the ages. You cannot see on the surface, but to see it unfold up close and in person? Very touching.”

“Kind of you,” Cassian says in a stunned tone.

“They must have already tired of the one where you are our third,” Jyn says, hand casually brushing Cassian’s arm. He looks at her with a look of partially-realized betrayal.

-

Cassian has been grounded since their arrival on base. For now, he spends his work shifts in Communications, sifting through logs for patterns and codes rather than running whatever missions he had before. Jyn privately suspects that this is because the continued presence of herself and Bodhi discomfits no few Rebels and that the restriction of their movements and understanding is a current strategy to manage that.

Hand-in-hand with that is the allocation of Cassian’s space to the full three of them. It's not so bad with an officer's quarters and fresher, however unsettling the unused bunk previously readied for a now-dead junior intelligence officer is. Still, the numbers work out and their night cycle routine remains stable. Jyn fastens the mosquito screen on each bed before she settles in; sometimes they talk amidst themselves before dropping off into sleep. 

When they wake panicking from nightmares there are always the sounds of others there: the even tide of breath and snores or another lying awake in the dark with their ghosts. Some nights the three of them sit on the floor in the clinging shadows and play idle games until the rest of the base begins to wake up. Some nights two of them sit up the rest of the cycle together. Rarely one will see the day cycle begin alone. Different, but not so strange a change to those who have by circumstance lived years in emotional isolation.

-  
Integration into the Rebellion begins several weeks in with Jyn teaching Bodhi how to make a fist. Bodhi’s attempts are clumsy and hesitant but Jyn maintains a serene patience as she walks him through the steps again and again. 

“Will you teach my friend as well?” an unfamiliar woman asks, once Bodhi has landed a strike with confidence and is rehydrating under Jyn’s diligent watch. “I haven't the understanding to teach him well.”

Jyn looks at them--a woman with olive skin and a man with hair curling out of a tie--and shrugs in agreement. She's bored enough to try, at least. And if it's an attempt to locate her vulnerabilities, well, she was Saw's best soldier. She has solutions to problems like these.

The man turns out to be scared of impact, but Jyn sticks with him. And that's how Jyn and Bodhi meet Shara and Kes.

-

“That's good to hear, Jyn,” Cassian says later, “I'm glad you're making friends.”

“Force,” Jyn says dramatically, “Bodhi! Why didn't you tell me that was happening?!”

Bodhi shrugs as Jyn playfully slaps his shoulder, grin spreading his mouth. “You seemed to be taking care of it.”

-

Cassian returns to his intelligence runs, little of which Jyn and Bodhi are authorized to know of. “I will be careful,” Cassian says when he catches Jyn not-worrying the night before his departure.

“I know you will,” Jyn says. “I wish--someone was there with you. In case things go wrong.”

“Things always go wrong,” Cassian says. “That does not mean I will not return.”

When his shuttle lands, Cassian limps out with an Imperial droid dogging his steps. Jyn has the blaster she’s not supposed to have up and the droid in its sights but something stops her from pulling the trigger--the oddness of its posture, its loping gait. Less programmed, more languid. Less regulation, more human.

“Jyn, this is K2SO,” Cassian says wearily but with no small amount of excitement. He is trying to conceal a shoulder injury as he gestures at the droid. “K2, this is my wife.”

There is a commotion as K2SO is herded off by Cassian’s XO and Cassian himself is herded off to the med bay by Jyn, and in the aftermath Cassian’s arm is folded into a sling and his other injuries cleaned and wrapped snugly.

“I see you’re making friends as well,” Jyn says. Cassian laughs, face lighting up below the ash and grime.

-

“We have a mission for you,” Mon Mothma says. Jyn looks at her steadily, evenly. “The Partisans are finally in position for a particularly strategic strike against the Empire.”

The shapeless specter of the mission is terrifying. “Who are we sending?” Jyn asks.

“Your retinue,” Mothma says. “Your husband, his droid, your pilot. A small force, but a capable one.”

“Not to support Saw Gerrera,” Jyn says, frowning. “If we were there to provide support you’d have allocated a larger force.”

“Saw Gerrera is there to provide diversion and support. Your team will be fulfilling the primary mission objective.”

“And the objective?” Jyn finally asks.

“To extract Galen Erso.”

-

“First we must go to Jedha,” Jyn says in the room they still share. “We’ll meet with Saw and his forces before they start the diversion, hone the plan first.”

A full-body shiver shakes its way through Bodhi.

“All right?” Jyn asks, soft-voiced like they’re back at the beginning and trying to avoid Rebel attention with undertones, like maybe Bodhi is lost in the space Bor Gullet rearranged and a raised voice will send him into terror.

“I haven’t been home since before--” Bodhi says, eyes cast down. Jyn reaches out and tucks him under her arm.

“I’ve got you,” she says. “We’ve got you.”

“What about you?” Cassian says, voice parting the darkness of the room from the corner. “Do we have you?”

Jyn inhales sharply and releases a slow, shuddering breath. When she speaks it is with a voice shaped around tears. “Yes. you have me.”

-

They land near the holy city, because to do otherwise might draw Imperial attention to the Partisans. There are still pilgrims enough to conceal their intent, even if the kyber crystals are all but lost now.

It’s all going well right up until a Partisan ambush triggers a firefight with a squad of Storm Troopers. Jyn goes down when an overhead stone facade shatters under blasterfire. Cassian and Bodhi reluctantly flee, swept up by the Partisans before the dust settles.

In the square cell they are given, Bodhi weeps freely and Cassian sits beside him without touching, choking on tears that do not come.

-

Jyn wakes in the rubble with blood drying stickily in her hair and down her face. Her body aches. And she is not alone.

“Little sister,” says a man in a Guardian’s robes, walking lightly despite his bulk, “are you all right?”

“I--yes,” Jyn says, “who--?”

“Baze Malbus,” a second man says. His robes flare as he sits to display red panels: red in esteem, red in warning. It is there in the first Guardian’s garb as well, red armor muted by dust. “And Chirrut Îmwe. Guardians of the Whills.”

He speaks lightly, but the hands curling around his staff are tight. Something about his statement bothers him, but it’s not the names he’s given for them.

“Liana,” Jyn says. “I--I don’t know where my family is.” Even as she speaks, she knows the words do not taste of lies or half-truths.

The Guardian who is Baze studies her for a long moment before reaching down and pulling her up and out of the rubble. “Then we must find your family.

-

“You are--Guardians of the temple? Shouldn’t that be what you guard?” Jyn says as they walk, mind moving slow in the wake of the blow. A dull ache radiates up her shoulders into the base of her skull but it is luckily unaccompanied by vertigo or nausea.

“We did,” Chirrut says with a strange resignation. “Before the Empire came. Before they ransacked the temple and took the kyber crystal.”

“Kyber?” Jyn breathes, fingers curling around the edges of her sleeves rather than grasping at her mother’s pendant, tucked away and hidden from strangers under her clothes.

“That is how we found you, little sister,” Chirrut says with greater cheer. “The strongest stars have hearts of kyber, as do you.”

-

In hindsight, this is when Jyn’s family grows.

-

A rogue and two Guardians walk into Saw Gerrera’s Jedha hide-out. The Partisans react by raising their guns. Cassian reacts by sweeping Jyn up into a snug embrace. He looses his hold on her only after Bodhi reaches out to hold the hand Jyn has hooked over Cassian’s shoulder.

“This is Baze and Chirrut--Guardians of the Whills. Friends. They saw me safely here,” Jyn says, listing slightly against Cassian’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” says Cassian, then he and Bodhi are guiding Jyn away to scan her for injuries. Jyn falls asleep in the stone-hewn cell. When she wakes, their team roster has expanded to include the two Guardians.

“I knew your name would not be Liana,” Chirrut says cheerfully in their shuttle after Bodhi slips up and uses her real name.

Baze grumbles, “Willful fool,” to distract from the too-knowing nature of that statement and asks, “Where to?”

“Eadu,” Cassian says, looking out the viewing port over Bodhi’s shoulder. K2 and Bodhi prepare to warp in tandem; even after all this time, the pilot’s seat is where Bodhi has the most clarity, where he is most grounded. Like stardust caught by gravity Jyn moves forward until she settles against Cassian as they move forward through the universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy’s Tiffany Blews: “Dear gravity, you held me down in this starless city.”  
> I don't know if I'm satisfied with this. I wanted to try marriage of convenience without having an explicit romantic relationship but success??  
> But I was also excessively tempted to throw isotropic and electron into the final sentence, so here's to stopping yourself when you need to be stopped.


End file.
